Quotes About Perspective

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words.

Michael] Callen and (...) one of his last interviews, with the documentary crew that had followed him to Ohio. "I realize some people could look at my life and say 'Oh, it was so sad. He died of AIDS and isn't that tragic.' But what I want to come through is that even after all the pain and all the torture, and even having AIDS, I can honestly say that being gay is the greatest gift I was ever given. I wouldn't change it for the world.

But few of us really stop to ask ourselves what new information might change our minds, especially on questions of politics and identity. We fall into the trap of confirmation bias, in which rather than updating our prior beliefs, we mould new information into a form that will confirm them.

The world ultimately is what we say it is.

Those Greeks and Romans," he protested, "they are so overrated. They only said everything first. I've said just as good things myself. But they got in before me."3

Those Greeks and Romans," he protested, "they are so overrated. They only said everything first. I've said just as good things myself. But they got in before me.

He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed.

I'm not so concerned as to whether God is on my side or not, but I am concerned as to whether I'm on God's side or not.

Moments like this make me glad I am a man." "Playing with snakes and poisons does not appeal to you?" "Not the least." "Come, you've been in battle. That cannot be much better. What is it like to stand in the front rank, thrusting your boarding pike at some hulking wild-eyed berserk trying to slash you in half?" "That is when I wish I was a woman," he replied primly. At least Love did not lie.

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.

Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich (2006) reported that there are more than 100 billion galaxies. One of these, our own relative speck of a galaxy, has a few hundred billion stars, many of which, like our Sun-star, are circled by planets. On the scale of outer space, we are less than a single grain of sand on all the oceans' beaches, and our lifetime but a relative nanosecond.

Anybody who thinks money will make you happy, hasn't got money.

superb group of mind-mindful novelists at work today: Philip Roth and Martin Amis, Cynthia Ozick, Jenny Erpenbeck, John Banville, V. S. Naipaul, and J. M. Coetzee—to start.

It is hard to be angry when one has seen the sun rise,' she said. It seems to be true,' he admitted. 'I wonder why.' Because it makes one feel so small and insignificant. It has been rising forever and will rise forever no matter what we do or do not do. All our problems are as nothing to the sun.

Do not complain of life's unfairness. It is never fair - at best it is impartial.

The purpose of debates is to explore issues, not end them.

To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order

Morality—like velocity—is relative. The determination of it depends on what the objects around you are doing. All one can do is measure one's position in relation to them; never can one measure one's velocity or morality in terms of absolutes.

This is my manifesto. My attempt to nudge people toward something, or back toward something. Toward what? An understanding that most of us already have on a deeper level. That a world exists outside of us. A world that reminds us that we are animals, too, animals who have evolved along with other animals on this earth. Thinking, planning, scheming, talking, writing animals, but animals nonetheless.

We used to think the world was so big. So indestructible. So fun. We still can't completely believe that it is as small and serious, as threatened and vulnerable, as we have made it.

Our where determines our who," Reg Saner once wrote.

we might be able to intellectually understand that the West has lost 18% of its trees over the last 20 years, and at the same time be overcome by the quaking of a single Aspen leaf.

If I wanted to be famous, I could have been famous before.